


Breathe Into Me

by andromedomai



Category: Red Hood: Lost Days, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Female Jason Todd, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rule 63, this is probably trash, what is grammar tho, yet another genderbend lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-13 05:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11753442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromedomai/pseuds/andromedomai
Summary: As Dick tried to swallow his scream and grunted with the effort, he knew he needed to get the fuck up and find some leverage, ASAP, because he could see those guns coming closer to him with each second.Yet what he didn’t see coming was a savior of his own.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you MissNaya, for sharing your headcanons with me ^.^
> 
> Title from Breathe Into Me by Marian Hill.

### Chapter 1

The patrol had started out as pretty normal and quiet for Nightwing. Other than a couple of robberies and a few cases of vandalism, Bludhaven didn’t have much to offer to her guardian for that night and Dick was glad for it. Because that meant he didn’t have to worry much while busting the illegal shipment Penguin was getting to Gotham via Bludhaven.

It was a classic case, really. Cobblepot was, once again, smuggling unregistered firearms for himself and various other criminals he was currently playing buddies with. The only difference was that this time, Cobblepot’s men had been actually pretty quiet. Getting the information for shipment details before the debut hadn’t been easy for neither Nightwing nor Officer Grayson, so Dick was planning to enjoy taking care of this case that night.

As much as he hated criminal activities in his city, Dick felt the adrenaline flare in his veins as he sneaked inside the particular warehouse on the docks and started taking the goons out one by one. Yes, Dick enjoyed serving justice as Officer Grayson by day, that was for sure, but he felt completely free when turning into Nightwing by night. Every punch, kick, jump and swing of his escrima sticks was fueling his energy and feeding his young soul.

Until one of the goons –the leader of the smuggling, from what Dick had gathered– struck him with a pretty little taser.

Now, if Dick had seen it coming, it would be a piece of cake for Nightwing to get the guy with his own weapon. But the powerful currency, which hit him right between his shoulder blades, was more than enough to stun him momentarily. It was a slip-up Dick shouldn’t have made. Because after that was when shit hit the pan.

Before he could gather himself up from where he had fallen, Dick heard a couple of guns being cocked. Normally, the guns would be a two, or maybe a three, in a scale of one to Joker. But electricity was still running inside Dick’s body and dizziness was taking its time before starting to disappear. And when he took one more shot from that taser, the chances of his vision getting back to its place became non-existent. As Dick tried to swallow his scream and grunted with the effort, he knew he needed to get the fuck up and find some leverage, ASAP, because he could see those guns coming closer to him with each second.

Yet what he didn’t see coming was a savior of his own.

The mysterious figure dropped inside the warehouse through the high windows near the ceiling with blazing guns and a brown leather jacket. It took approximately one or two minutes to take all the goons down, and if it weren’t for the guns, Dick would’ve been highly impressed with the guy for this. 

After the warehouse got silent, Dick tried to decide whether to approach the newcomer with gratitude or hide and take cover in case he wasn’t actually being saved. For all he knew, this guy could’ve been trying to get the guns for himself by smuggling them from other smugglers. But before he could do anything, the mysterious man turned towards him, and Dick raised a brow under his black domino mask.

The guy was tall, maybe as tall as he was, and wore a gray armor-suit with no insignia under his leather jacket. His cargo pants, combat boots and black gloved hands holding two guns showed no patch of skin or shape of figure – but what weirded Dick out was the red… _helmet_ he had on his head. Besides the guns he was holding, something about this man screamed danger to Dick. He was no one he knew and the lack of information about him was immensely suspicious to the detective side of Nightwing. So he decided to get up and fix that in the old fashioned way.

“Who are you?” he asked with a clear voice.

Not to his surprise, the guy didn’t answer him and turned around to leave from where he came by jumping crate to crate. Dick raised another brow at the guy and started to follow him. What did surprise him, though, was how easily the guy made Dick lose his trails. It was as if the mysterious guy with the red helmet had vanished into the night under five minutes –and it irritated Dick. But after spending an hour looking for the guy and finding nada, he accepted temporal defeat and returned to his small apartment. Despite being truly annoyed, Dick guessed he had to hand it to him, the guy was good. He still didn’t know how good, but he was apparently good enough to slip Dick’s grasp –and it was both frustrating and intriguing.

Dick gave himself three days to find who this mysterious guy was.

\----

After three weeks, Dick stopped looking. 

Because the man with the red helmet kept finding Dick before Dick could find him or anything about him. 

He didn’t show up in a pattern though. Sometimes he showed up a couple of times within the week and sometimes he didn’t show up for the month at all. At first, it was incredibly irritating to Dick, but as he kept working with the guy –and apparently he had no say in this, as the guy didn’t take none of his shit every time Dick said he didn’t want him around– he started to find the whole thing… confusing. For himself anyway. Because the underground scum of Bludhaven had been quick to understand that this man with the red helmet, who sometimes worked with the Nightwing, was dangerous to them. He was making himself a reputation without even adapting a name, and it was getting easier for Dick to admit that the guy was _good_ good.

But strangely, and to Dick’s relief, the man didn’t try to build up his own force in Bludhaven. He usually worked alone, sometimes tagged along with Nightwing, but other than that, there was no information or attachments he had with other people. Dick supposed at least that side of their relationship didn’t need too much prying.

Dick didn’t tell Bruce about him, and even if the Bat knew –and Dick suspected he did– his adoptive father never asked anything about the mysterious man. Sure, it felt like he was protecting some guy, who killed to stop bad guys, from the World’s Greatest Detective, but Dick felt like they had established a fragile tread of trust between them and he had no intentions of ruining that. And why he wanted to have that man's trust, Dick had no idea.

Sometimes the stranger indulged Dick by answering some questions, but if he didn’t like them, like the big ones about his past or identity, he just flew away. Dick had tried to talk to him about guns one night, and predictably, it had been utterly horrible. Dick acknowledged how the man didn’t kill everyone in his path. He mostly shot at knee caps or shoulders and held back from killing unless it was necessary. But still, seeing or hearing the guns still unnerved the young vigilante. It had been the first time the man with the helmet raised his voice and spoke more than three words to Dick. He hadn’t showed up for weeks and when he finally did after twenty four days (not that Dick was counting) he had made Dick swear that he wouldn’t interfere with his methods of bringing justice. Dick also didn’t know why he had agreed to that, but he was genuinely glad when he noticed the other man using more knives or tasers than guns. Dick never saw him without his guns safely sitting in their holsters, though. 

One night, when the man was getting ready to disappear again after their somewhat routine patrol, Dick finally gathered his courage and said, “Y’know, it’s kinda strange to keep referring to you as the man with the helmet. Can you at least give me a… I don’t know, an alias?”

The noise he got was between a laugh and a grunt and it gave Dick’s body the strangest chill. The man looked at Dick over his shoulder and simply said, “Then call me Red Hood, pretty bird,” before vanishing into the dawn.

Sometimes that gruff voice kept Dick awake at nights, accompanied him under the sheets on his bed or rang in his head through his long showers, along with the memories of strong thighs that crushed people’s heads into unconsciousness. Dick couldn’t help himself, he didn’t know how the hell he could be attracted to a person he didn’t know –or hadn’t even seen, for that matter– but he was. And he was deep enough that stopping to think about him wasn’t even an option for Dick anymore. 

(Dick never noticed the silhouette that often watched him at those weakest moments filled with moans and pleasure.)

\----

Exactly three months after the night they had first met each other, Nightwing and Red Hood were working together once more. They were trying to take down a big chain of human traffickers that was connected with a couple of gangs in Star City and Gotham. With the two of them, bailing out the sixty seven men, women and children was almost easy, but fighting off the huge amount of angry thugs until they were safely out was proving to be a little difficult. They were so many that Dick wasn’t even bothered by Hood’s blazing guns this time. Which was a lot, coming from the man who had grown up under the wings of the Bat.

As Nightwing punched a hole in a truck’s window with a thug’s head, he heard someone shout out an “It’s ready!” With every remaining goon trying to run outside of the abandoned warehouse, it took Nightwing and Red Hood just a second to understand what was happening. They threw themselves out of the building just before the bombs, which deleted every information that could’ve been used against the owners of the chain, exploded.

Somehow, thought Dick as he lied between pieces of concrete, they had made it out alive. Yes, he could feel the blood drizzling behind his head but well, alive was alive, nevertheless. He supposed he could heal from that before the month was over, and it was all thanks to Red Hood, who had shielded himself for Dick.

_Shit._

Dick noticed it too late that the Hood was lying motionless next to him. With a slight panic, he hurriedly but gently turned the other man on his back so that he could examine him better. Pieces of his clothes, along with small shreds of Dick’s suit, were scorched and torn by the explosion. His hood was damaged a little, and Dick remembered how Hood had said his ‘not-a-helmet-it’s-a-hood’ was practically invincible, which made Dick worry even more. Luckily no shrapnel pieces were visible over Red Hood’s body, but he still had some wounds that possibly needed stitches.

Dick lowered his head to hear a heartbeat from his partner, but he almost immediately jumped back when his ear touched Hood’s chest. Sure, and Dick thanked God for that, his heart was still beating, albeit a little slowly, but what made Dick pull back was… _curves?_

How in the world did that happen?!

The soft bumps were almost invisible, and if it wasn’t for the proximity, he would’ve thought they were just strong pecs. But with Hood’s ripped clothes, Dick slowly, _very_ slowly, started to see it. The hidden curves on the waist, the flat stomach and a soft chest with curves that were possibly hidden by bindings. Dick couldn’t bring himself to remove his… no, _her_ damaged hood, so he decided to do the next best thing he could think of, and carried Red Hood to his apartment.

After he set the Hood on his shitty couch, Dick started to think as he took care of both of their visible injuries. He had no idea how the hell he had missed _that,_ but Dick supposed the Hood’s disguise was very much deliberate. But he wasn’t going to lie and say he wasn’t shocked. Or disappointed with his detective skills. As he took Hood’s leather jacket off without jostling her much, Dick noticed her broad shoulders, the apparent muscles in her arms and the bandages over her breasts through the ripped pieces of her armor-suit.

Just as Dick was starting to tend the gash over her waist and stomach, Red Hood suddenly moaned and shook her head. Her voice –which still sounded deeper than most women’s, but evidently belonged to a female– came clearer since the hood was damaged. She reached to the back of her hood, to use the mechanism to open the hood, Dick suspected, but she failed to reach it and groaned with the effort.

Dick, the kind soul he was, said “Here, let me help,” and also reached for the hood to find a button of sorts. But he didn’t realize that the woman was actually trying to stop him, until the hood was fully removed.

Every single thought about being tricked fell away with the hood itself as he gasped and tried to take in the newly revealed face. A face he hadn’t seen for five years. A face he had been too late to treasure. A face that caused him guilt every time he thought about it. 

_“J-Jayla?”_


	2. Chapter 2

### Chapter 2

The first thing Dick noticed about her was how much she had changed since he last saw her. Sure, Jayla Todd had never been someone with a soft face, but now, the strong edge of her mouth, the sharpness of her frown and the coldness of her expression reminded Dick of a cut gemstone. Still beautiful but also very dangerous.

When he looked in her eyes, he remembered what a clear blue they once were. Now, they had an odd and dangerous shade in them. For a while, he couldn’t look at anywhere but the cool teal of Jayla’s eyes, and when he finally did, he noticed the new streak of white in the young woman’s neck length messy hair. It contrasted with the black of her hair and Dick wondered where that came from. The little crook of the bridge of her nose was still as cute as he remembered. But she had fresh injuries too –a couple of stitches on her left brow, a healing cut on the side of her jaw and a purple bruise in her right cheek, along with a split bottom lip.

Dick barely stopped himself from touching Jayla’s face to make sure she was real.

Seeing her face brought so many memories back that Dick felt like screaming his broken heart out for a second. He still remembered the day Bruce had brought the kid who had tried to steal the tires of Batmobile to the Cave. It was four months before Dick had left the Manor to fly solo, when the thirteen-year-old boy had started to live with them. And embarrassingly, if Alfred hadn’t figured out that Master Jay had actually been a young girl this whole time at the end of the month, it would’ve taken Bruce and Dick even longer to figure it out.

Fooling Dick for the second time with the same method was definitely a Jay thing to do.

She had told them how she had to cut her hair short and act like a boy to lessen the chances of being raped or traded by sex traffickers on the streets. And with her rough, too boyish to be a girl and too girlish to be a boy face, her tall and lanky figure with no distinctive curves, as well as her attitude, it probably hadn’t been that hard to mislead people.

Dick still remembered the flicker of fear in her blue eyes when she had asked them if they were going to throw her out because she had tricked them. They had told her “Of course not, Jay, you’re still you and you’re safe here with us,” and treated her no differently than before. It had taken Jayla another month to actually relax and start talking about her previous life.

After that, her choice of clothes hadn’t changed much but she had started to grow her wavy black hair out. She was most definitely not a girly girl, had one hell of a temper and a mouth like a sailor, but for a while, Jayla had tried to act better and all lady like to show her gratitude to Bruce. It hadn’t been difficult for them to catch how uncomfortable she had been with the dresses she wore for galas or charity balls. But she had wanted to please them so bad that they couldn’t have brought themselves to say anything –until she had tripped over her dress clumsily and twisted her ankle. After that, they had told her it was alright, that she didn’t need to act like someone she wasn’t, that they loved her the way she was and soon, Jayla had stopped the act altogether.

Bruce had asked her if she wanted to go to school and Jayla had refused saying that she hadn’t been to school for years. Of course, Bruce had hired tutors to educate his new ward. And even though they had realized how smart Jayla had been, none of them had expected the amount of interest she had shown to books and reading in general.

Dick had always thought that Jayla liked spending time with him because he wouldn’t see her smiling and being relaxed while doing something else. Sure, Jayla loved and respected Bruce and Alfred who both gave her a shelter, new opportunities and practically a new family, but she would be different when she was with Dick. And Dick loved to have that privilege for himself.

Barbara would visit the Cave as the Batgirl sometimes –and she had totally adored Jayla. She’d have long talks with Jayla, claiming that she was the only girl close to her age that had a second identity. In the beginning, Jayla was cold and distant towards Barbara but after a while, Dick often caught the way she’d look at the Batgirl with something deeper and more intense than hostility and jealousy. Alfred would always claim that she’d look at Dick like that too but Dick would say it was only reserved for Barbara.

Sometimes, Jayla would join Bruce and Dick’s sparring sessions. Living in the streets for years had taught her how to protect herself and whether to be tough or smart if she had to take someone down. And when Jayla had said she wanted to learn different techniques of fighting, they had slowly started to teach her.

He sometimes wasn’t sure if Bruce had understood that at all, but Jayla had been very different than Dick, and he had loved her like he would his own sister. But he had been too engrossed in his own issues that when he had realized Bruce was raising another Robin, it had already been too late to stop him.

Two months after the establishment of the Nightwing, a new Robin had debuted in the streets of Gotham. At first, most of the criminals hadn’t taken the young girl seriously, but Dick remembered that Jayla had been determined to make a quick work of that. And soon enough, the crooks and thugs of Gotham had learned that the new Girl Wonder was no joke. Dick would’ve been proud of her if the circumstances had been different in the beginning.

For a long time, Dick hadn’t known how to feel about Jayla replacing him. But after a while, he saw what everything had been about. Jayla had grown up with violence and anger all around her in the streets, and Dick understood that it had to be directed in somewhere where it wouldn’t hurt other people, along with Jayla herself. He remembered how Bruce had said Jayla would’ve probably been a juvie if Bruce hadn’t taken her in. It hadn’t been easy for Dick to stop being completely resentful with Bruce, but because he get why he did it, his cold shoulder hadn’t last too long. After that, things had actually started to settle down in their small family.

Until the Joker happened.

Jayla Todd was fifteen when she had been murdered.

Dick knew he didn’t recover from that even after five years. He remembered how unrecognizable her face had been and how broken her body had looked from the beating. She had looked so small and fragile when Batman had carried her out of the Batmobile that Dick had to look away from her. He had never seen Alfred cry before that day. They had mourned her for days and the memories had haunted them for weeks after that. While staying in the Manor to help Bruce through it, he couldn’t even bring himself to be offended when his mentor had closed himself up to everyone. Dick didn’t know what had kept him from doing the same but somehow, he had pulled both himself and Bruce through it all.

The guilt of leaving too soon and never getting to know Jayla completely was probably why he had welcomed the new Robin, Tim Drake, with open arms after Jayla Todd’s funeral.

Staring at her face for a very long time, Dick wondered how the hell Jayla was alive.

But when Jayla looked at him just for a moment before hastily getting up from the couch, taking her hood from Dick and practically running to the window, he knew he wasn’t getting an answer anytime soon.

Dick didn’t even try to stop her as Jayla fled out of his apartment.

\----

And just when Dick was starting to think that she would never be back again, Red Hood appeared in the middle of a fight with her blazing guns and red helmet, helping Nightwing out like she hadn’t been gone for the last six weeks.

But Dick… Well, Dick was such a goner that he just knew he wasn’t going to hold any grudges against her for that.

When they were finished with the thugs, Hood waited until Dick zip tied the men for the police to found and simply threw a “Follow me,” over her shoulder. 

Dick put his grappling hook back on his belt when Hood stopped on a high rooftop and sat close to the edge. She was dangling her feet when she finally took her hood off. Dick almost snorted when a red domino mask was revealed after the helmet was gone.

The tension was almost visible between the two vigilantes, so Dick said nothing and silently lowered himself next to her and waited for Jayla to start. And after a couple of minutes of silence, she sighed and slowly started to tell him everything.

She told him about how she had been brought back to life when Ra’s al Ghul had bathed her in the Lazarus Pit as a penance for her ‘unnecessary death’, how the League of Assassins and Talia herself had taught her different skills, how she had… _worked_ on different cases before coming back to America, how furious she had been when she found out the Joker was still alive and that there was a new Robin running in the streets after what had happened to her, how she choose to establish her independence in the streets with a male attire (though she never apologized to Dick for fooling him, not that Dick expected that from Jayla, anyway) to make sure the people would judge her by her actions and not by their prejudices and how she had been a crime lord with no name for a while before dropping her men to continue solo.

(Although she never told him how she had cried her eyes out when Talia had showed her the pictures of the new Robin.)

“I thought about coming back to Gotham, three years ago,” Jayla said, without meeting his eyes. “I wasn’t angry with Bruce for not being able to save me. I just wanted to know why the fuck the Joker was still alive after what he did to me –what he did to everyone else in that goddamn city. But every time I thought about going back… I couldn’t do it.”

“Why?”

Jayla sighed and waved a hand through her hair. “At first I was… preparing for something… _different._ I wanted revenge from both Bruce and the Joker. But later, when I realized _just_ killing them wasn’t what I wanted, I just decided to stay away. Even after dying and coming back, I still didn’t want to just sit down and watch as the world kept crumbling. This world needs people like me who’d cross that line to do the right thing, Dick. And I was willing to do what you and Bruce had always been too afraid to do. I didn’t decide to start using guns and killing just for the kicks, y’know –and you should know, I killed a lot of criminals before and after coming back to America. I wanted to operate without being under the Bat’s shadow. My way somehow… ended up back at Gotham and then Bludhaven.”

Dick had seen Red Hood killing people before but that still didn’t make it easier to hear it from her. He also didn’t know what to feel about her wanting to… _kill_ Bruce in the past, so he said nothing, and apparently Jayla wasn’t expecting to hear anything. She sighed and kept talking. “At first I didn’t even know if it was alright for me to stay here, in the ‘Haven, with you still here. And I’ve gotta hand it to you, dude, I gave you like, a month before starting to hunt me down. But you only tried to talk about my methods and just let it drop when I pushed you away. I still don’t know whether you’re open-minded or just plain stupid, Goldie.”

Jayla grinned mockingly and Dick decided to cherish that instead of ruining her relatively calm mood, so he waited until she continued.

“But even after spending four and a half months here, I still feel like… something is lacking. I still have no home, no personal life, _nothing_ but dealing with scumbags and criminals. And now that you know who I am, I… I truly don’t know what to do with my life. Don't get me wrong, I'm used to having this kind of life but... I guess I’m gonna try a new city. Maybe I won’t screw too badly this time.” 

Her voice was surprisingly calm and casual as she said that, almost as if she was discussing what she had for the dinner. Once again Dick didn’t know how to respond, so for a while, he didn’t. As they kept watching the city under their feet, Jayla’s shoulders started to lose their posture and Dick felt like it could be the right time to say something.

“You can keep staying in Bludhaven.”

“So that you can call the Bat on me?” Jayla snorted. “No offence Dickie, but I hadn’t set foot in Bludhaven since you learned who I really am.”

Dick didn’t try to hide his grimace. He was hurt that Jayla would still think like that about him, but after everything she just told him, Dick supposed he could tolerate it. “Then why did you come back tonight?”

For the first time in that night Jayla turned to look at him right in the face. Dick wished the white lenses of her domino would show her teal eyes but it was obvious Jayla wasn’t planning to reveal that much of herself to him. She paused for a moment before answering, and frowned a little when she finally did. “I have no idea.”

Well, that most definitely wasn’t the answer Dick was expecting, so he decided to ignore it and change the subject. “Look, if you don’t want to be found, I can help you. For as long as you need. Because dead or alive, Red Hood or Robin, you’re still you, and you’re family, Jay.”

Dick noticed how her jaw tightened at the mention of her (their) old alias, but for a while Jayla didn’t say anything. For a second she looked like she wanted to say something else, but she only huffed at him and said, “Well, I don’t know about you, Grayson, but I’m not planning to crash in shitty motels for another four months.”

“You can stay with me if you want.” Dick tried to sound as genuine as he felt when he made the offer.

Jayla snorted. “You sure you want to have me as your homeboy, Dickie?” 

Her voice would’ve sounded like nonchalant and sassy to anyone else. But all Dick could see was the memory of a little girl, raising her blue eyes from the floor and asking, _“Are you going to kick me out now that you know?”_ with a small but slightly angry voice. And he didn’t know what could’ve shattered his heart more than that.

“I’m offering, aren’t I?” Jayla hated pity when it was directed to her, so Dick tried to sound as neutral as possible. “We can figure this out together, Jaybird.”

It took Jayla a few moments to decide. But when she faced him after a couple of minutes, Dick’s heart fluttered with the slight, almost impossible to spot little smirk gracing her tough features. “I think you win this round, Goldie. Though you’re lucky I have nothing better to do.” Her voice was still quiet but the small note of amusement was clear enough. “Do you have anything to eat? I’m kinda hungry.”

“Yes, of course, we can buy some take over,” Dick nodded enthusiastically as he got up on his feet. “There’s a great Italian restaurant around the corner, or a Thai deli two blocks away. Or we could just grab some burgers and eat in my apartment—”

“Calm your tits, Dickhead. Anything is fine.”

 _God,_ Dick thought as he followed Jayla’s suit by aiming his grappling hook and throwing himself off of the building. He even missed her devil-may-care attitude and careless voice. After being away from Jay for years, and reuniting with her once more, Dick realized that he cared about Jayla more than he had noticed before.

Dick hoped that he wasn’t as screwed as he feared.

\----

Even though Jayla kept saying things like “I’m not gonna stay forever, Dickie,” and “Just so you wait, I’m getting out of this shitty apartment as soon as I find a better place,” she was still there after two months and three weeks. Dick sometimes teased her about this but since he didn’t want to take any risks with Jayla, he mostly didn’t say anything and laughed at her complaints.

When it had been a month since they started living together, Dick had asked Jayla if she was ever going to go and talk with Bruce. Jayla hadn’t answered him at first, but she had admitted that she had been thinking about it for a while. Dick had jumped at the opportunity head first and encouraged her to make a compromise with herself. And when Jayla had agreed to stay in Gotham for a week to get comfortable before approaching Bruce, Dick had been incredibly happy. _(“No, this isn’t a shriek, Jayla Patricia Todd, this is just a… manly exclamation, shut up.”)_

But obviously, things hadn’t gone according to the plan. In her defense, Jayla had tried, really tried to walk away from the scene when she had seen her successor getting his ass handed back to him. 

And after taking out the thugs around him with rubber bullets –holding the promise she had made to Dick before coming to Gotham– Jayla had turned around to get away from the kid, but the Robin, Timothy Drake she’d remembered, had called out for her after seeing her unhooded face.

“You’re _her,_ aren’t you? You’re Jayla Todd.”

Jayla had wanted to turn around and kick his ass for even saying her name but she had simply said, “Don’t mess with the stuff you don’t know, _Robin.”_

“Thank you for saving me.”

That had stopped Jayla in her tracks. She had turned around and approached him while staring intently at his face. To her satisfaction, the boy had backed off a little, but kept his ground. Even weeks after that night, Jayla still didn’t know why she had just… _nodded,_ instead of beating the shit out of the kid like she (and Dick) thought like she would.

But of course, she had been pissed with the kid for being the cause of her distraction when Batman had arrived to the scene with the Nightwing.

(Jayla still pretended like Bruce hadn’t tried to hug her when they were leaving the city at the end of the week.)

Things didn’t exactly get better after that but all of them acknowledged the progress they were making. And if nothing, every time Jayla visited the Manor (like, once or twice a month) Alfred practically prepared a feast for her and just for that, she supposed she could try to refrain herself from starting up intense fights.

And six weeks after that relatively calm and uneventful but hundred percent intense and bitter face off in Gotham, Jayla and Dick were having a normal evening by finishing up their dinner (mac and cheese) in Dick’s apartment.

Dick huffed as he lied on the couch, temporarily banned from nightly activities because of his broken arm. The young man hadn’t been out to patrol for the last two weeks and he was incredibly, horribly _bored._ Jay was trying to keep him company in the evenings, before going out to patrol the whole city since Dick was unable to. And because that took Jayla longer to finish, Dick mostly fell asleep while waiting for her. He really, really hated injuries and being benched.

Thinking about the past three months, Dick couldn’t pin-point exactly when the young woman had stopped using her helmet and went for the red domino masks. She also didn’t wear bindings like she used to and just started to secure her breasts with sports bras under the red bat of her new suit-armors. She said she had established enough power for the underground to take Red Hood seriously and honestly, Dick was proud of her for trying to be more secure with herself. Besides, there were a lot of men in Bludhaven that needed to get their butts whooped by badass women –and Jayla was more than happy to serve to that cause by putting them in their places.

The young man didn’t know what had pushed her to talk about it –and it definitely hadn’t been Dick himself– but one day, Jayla had also started to talk to him about her… mental state. She had opened the subject up completely randomly, and while being surprised with her openness, Dick had been glad that Jayla trusted him enough to tell him about it.

She hadn’t been hesitant to say how she thought she wasn’t ‘completely right in the head’. She had told him how Talia had warned her about the possible side effects of the Pit _after_ her dip and how she had denied that for quite some time. Dick had acknowledged that when she’d told him about it, and had tried to understand her better to make things more comfortable for her. Sometimes simply talking would work, it would calm Jayla down and make her collect her mind, but other times… like, after a tough nightmare or the news of Batman sending Joker back to jail once more, Jayla would lose her head like she’d warned Dick, and would just… _break down._

Dick would hold her and keep her inside their apartment until she was stable once more. If she had accidently hurt him while in her phase, Jayla would cry for hours about how she hated herself and just wanted to die for good and why did she have to be like this, and Dick would cry with her. And sometimes, it would actually make things better for Jayla, serving as some sort of therapy. 

Though, both of them noticed that she was actually getting better lately. The last time Jayla had seen the news of Joker escaping Arkham again, she had just closed the TV and started to read a book to calm herself without speaking the whole night. She was also smiling and laughing more now. Most of the time Dick didn’t know what he was doing and only trusted his instincts, and slowly but surely, they were making progress. And Dick knew he was glad to be a part of that, no matter how bumpy the road was for both of them.

“It’s almost midnight, Jay!” Dick hollered for his… well, even after all those weeks of living together, Dick still didn’t know what they were, because Jayla had been reluctant (it wasn’t completely aggressive like running away from him, but more like… trying to find excuses to change the subject kind of reluctance, so Dick still held his hope) to talk about their relationship. But when he thought about Jayla privately, he enjoyed calling her his… _partner_ in his head. “I thought you said you were… leaving in… five minutes…”

 _Oh, hell,_ Dick thought as his voice slowly dimmed.

Since Richard Grayson was normally a people’s person, totally out-going and chattering, only a number of things could leave him speechless. He supposed that Jayla Todd, walking into their living room, with Dick’s tight, _tight_ Nightwing costume was definitely in top three.

“W-what are you doing?”

“I’m going out for patrol.”

“B-but… with my suit?”

“Well, it’s been a while since Nightwing was last seen flying around. I thought I’d do you a favor by covering for you. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

Oh, Dick didn’t mind _at all._ I mean, who would, with Jay’s powerful thighs, soft chest under wrappings and chest armor and that God sent thick ass, right? Obviously, it wasn’t the first time Dick was seeing Jay’s assets –with or without any clothing– _but damn,_ his suit looked good on Jayla.

The only thing that bugged him at the moment was the fact that she was leaving him all alone while looking like that. Also, Dick wanted to be one of the guys whose head would get crushed by Jayla’s thighs tonight –but he supposed that had to wait for a while. 

Shit. Priorities, Grayson.

He got up to his feet and walked towards Jay as she put a wig over her own hair which had grown enough to touch her shoulders by now. He could see the small but temporal changes in his suit to fit Jayla’s body better and even though she was right there with him, Dick felt impatient.

“Don’t take so long, okay, Jay?”

“What are you talking about? I’m gonna be out as long as I’m needed.”

“Yeah, I know that, but…” Dick voice dropped to a sultry tone. “I’d hate it if those thugs out there would spend more time with you than me tonight.”

When he curled his free arm around her hips, Jay looked at his face and grinned at him. “Oh, yeah? Then maybe you should lend me your suit more, Boy Wonder.”

“Yeah, I might just do that.”

Their lips weren’t even touching, but they were close enough to share each other’s breath and that, teasing each other with deep and breathy voices, staring at each other’s face and just standing in the same space together –nothing felt more intimate than that.

“The sooner you let me go the sooner we’ll be back at bed, Goldie,” reminded Jayla.

Dick huffed a laugh and softly kissed her cheek. “As you wish, my lady.”

Jay put her hands over his chest and leaned into his ear. Her breath was hot against his skin as she whispered. “And if you manage to stay awake and… _prepare_ yourself before I come back, maybe for a change, _I’ll_ fuck you tonight. We haven’t done that in a long time, y’know. What do you say, Goldie, hmm?”

Dick thought about her body against his, her rough and calloused hands on his skin, the exquisite smell of her sweat after a long night of patrol and the feel of her long fingers _inside_ him. He shivered with the promise. “I’d like that very much, Little Wing,” he hummed back.

Jayla pressed a little kiss to his lips, pushed his body aside with her own and threw a salute over her shoulder as she jumped out of the fire escape and swung into the night with a mocking laugh.

Their lives weren’t, and would never be, perfect. They both had their fights, ongoing problems, never ending nightmares, bad memories, daddy issues and vigilante lives –but it didn’t matter to them. They were fine as long as they had each other, and Dick guessed that it was all they ever really needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I mashed up Under the Red Hood with Red Hood: Lost Days because I love both arcs with my life. I hope it was good enough ^.^
> 
> Also, I love the name Patricia, and I don't know why but it felt like Petra just wouldn’t fit with Jayla. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
